Tomczyk gets grid penalty

The Audi driver, who dominated the weekend here last year, had qualified a disappointing 11th on the grid. However, he has now been moved back to 14th, due to a breach of parc ferme conditions by his team.

Tomczyk was eliminated in Q2 on Saturday afternoon, and he has been penalised because his team took the wheels off his Audi after the session, despite the car being under parc ferme at that time.

The stewards of the meeting decided to take away all of the German's times from Q2, which led to him dropping down to 14th on the grid (the last of the Q2 runners).

Tomczyk shrugged off the penalty, explaining that he was more disappointed by his lack of pace having expected to be a frontrunner.

"It keeps my bad luck going," he told AUTOSPORT. "But the main things is that I don't know why we were so slow.

"The car felt really good in practice this morning, then in qualifying I just had no grip at the front. It's very strange."